For most people, ‘luxury dive replica watch’ is synonymous with the Rolex Submariner.
Its design is the one which dictated what dive watches were supposed to look like—emulated, paid homage to and downright stolen by almost every other manufacturer out there. It counts some of the coolest figures of all time, both real and fictional, among its admirers, and is still one of the first stops in the journey of every burgeoning watch collector.
An Iconic Style
The Rolex Submariner Replica Watch was actually launched the same year as both the Explorer and the now-defunct Turn-O-Graph, the latter almost identical to the Submariner, even down to its black rotating timing bezel.
The bezel got its graduated markings along the first 15-minutes in the mid-1950s with the ref. 6538, which made tracking immersion time easier. Interestingly, the Rolex Replica wouldn’t get a unidirectional bezel until as recently as 1983, after the patent held by Blancpain for their Fifty Fathoms had expired. Every Submariner before then had a bezel which turned both ways.